During my years as an official court reporter, I have seen and heard a lot of oddities.  One such oddity occurred as I was driving to Elizabethtown for work.   It was many years ago, but I can still remember it as though it happened yesterday.

driving down the highway

It was a sunny, summer day, and I was, believe it or not, running a tad late for work, so there was no dilly-dallying around to get on down the road.  Since I was totally focused on driving, it took me just a bit to realize the gal sitting in the car directly in front of me had not moved one inch.

When I finally started noticing my surroundings, what was going on in the car I had been following down Route 1, I began to notice that she was sitting up higher than the driver as though she were sitting on the console.  She was practically in the driver’s lap, she was sitting so closely.  And she was ramrod straight.  WOW!  What great posture that gal had.

This stiff-as-a-mannequin pose really caught my attention, and I began in earnest to see if she would at least move her head to look at the scenery.  But, no.  She didn’t even move with the pull of a curve.

Now, that’s odd.  I had never seen anyone sit that stiff and straight on the console of a car in my life.  She looked like a mannequin!

the mannequin girlfriend

But what in God’s green earth would somebody be doing with a mannequin sitting right beside them?  Maybe she was dead!  Oh, the thoughts that were swirling in my head!

I followed the driver and it all the way to the Karbers Ridge Road where the vehicle turned.  It was all I could do to say heck with work and follow the car.  Was the driver going to bury this thing sitting there?  Was it truly a mannequin as it appeared to be, this ramrod stiff, never-moved-a-muscle, gal-looking thing?

I will never know.  My sense of get-to-work-or-get-fired duty won out, and I kept going straight… with my neck craned backwards to see all I could see till they got out of sight.